We’ve treated ourselves to a new theme, which was modified by a friend of ours (I was owed a favour :razz: )- with the code itself modified by myself and brought upto a Widget friendly stance. The header was also designed (albeit badly) by myself using some new brushes I got for Photoshop - made it somewhat technology come WEB 2.0 looking. I like it…opinions please!

We ditched our other theme, as we found a few errors in it and as it wasn’t mine I didn’t want to touch the structure and f**k it up even further!

*EDIT*: Found a problem with IE…trying to fix it!

I’m back after having a few days rest from blogging and the internet. Mainly as I’ve been focused on a few other projects, and other bits and pieces.

I’ve been busy running around since Saturday, we got ourselves another bus, an Ex-London Transport Leyland Titan that used to work around the Coolock, Kinsealy, Swords area. Ended up being roped into helping out tiling a floor (with big f**k off slate tiles!), and later that evening repaneling a bus…I wasn’t much of a help as I was fucked and wanted to go home…as you do!

Sunday I spent mainly coding and editing photos, and making headers and various other jobs I’ve been putting off for ages! On Sunday, I made the decision to free up my portfolio, by selling most of my projects/websites. A drastic move, and my online income will be severely reduced, but I believe that it would be for the best.

Considering, I will have more time to focus on websites I’m keeping online - futher their development, earning potential and rankings, etc… Monthly expenditure will be reduced, I will recoupe the costs of setting them up (and possibily gain a small profit), I’ll have more time to focus on things other than online activities, such as starting a career, spending more time acquiring and restoring vehicles for preservation, futher my other skills like photography, programming, etc… So selling most of my websites will benefit me for the better.

It also gives me the opportunity to develop new projects futher along the line. I made the mistake many people make, by jumping into too many projects too quick and not having the time to spend developing them properly. Some of my latest projects like Blogger Hub and Impulse Blogger
have been abused and abandoned. They offer great potential, but I simply haven’t the time to spend on them - so these will be my priority to get sold, as they’ve the most potential and could turn a profit :twisted:

The above Blogger Hub and Impulse Blogger will be sold alongside Irish Humour Blog, Joozo.net, LooseHosting, PictureStorer.com, and Whatsmypagerank.net & Whatsmypagerank.org. They’re a mixture of domains, developed sites, blogs and forums, and opened but pretty much undeveloped websites.

Any person who wishes to make a reasonable offer before they are listed for public sale shortly should contact me ASAP. Bear in mind I want quick sales, so sensible offers please!

I haven’t been trading domains for a few weeks - mainly through being extremely busy with managing sites and planning out material for the domains I’ve already got in my posession!

Although, I came across an eBay auction last night and couldn’t turn the offer down. Basically, the domains:

WHATSMYPAGERANK.NET

WHATSMYPAGERANK.ORG

Came up for sale, at a steal! I won them both for $7.05, inc. transfer - not bad! They’re prime candidates for a profit, either through development, parking, or re-sale. Well what sort of mini-entrepreneur would I be if I didn’t see a profit in everything I buy!

While on the subject of websites. I’m opening Blogger Hub shortly - I’d say gimme another week! I’ve also to completely design, code and test the websites for the Motor Vehicle Preservation Society of Ireland and Rivercourt Coaches - which as client websites are pretty high on my priority list

Okay, you’ll probably notice that the blog looks a little different today - well, I’ve been busy getting it looking more presentable, with a new theme, making the sitebar look more attractive, and messing around with the Widgets.

One thing, is it took ages! This new theme, doesn’t like Widgets (on it’s current layout), so we had to revert to our roots, and dust off our HTML skills to get the sidebar looking mildly well - if I do say so myself

I’ve gotten rid of WidgetBucks - as I don’t honestly feel I’ll make money from it, and it looked horrible, and flashy. So, I’ve decided to give Adsense another shot - I find that it can fit in better with a theme than Bidvertiser.

And to encourage more RSS subscribers, we’ve dotted various methods to sign upto our RSS feed - such as the new Email Subscription option in the sidebar, which will deliver new posts direct to your inbox! And as usual, the bog standard Google Reader option is available.

Well, I’m a sheep! I’m following the suit, of many bloggers, by enquiring (only enquiring mind!) on a custom style. I’ve had the idea in my head for months - I’ve just put it off, due to my tight fistedness towards money…and my fear of spending it!

But, I’ve been reinspired, due to bloggers like Smemon, and Mark Walsh (a few plugs there for the lads! :wink: ) sharing their experiences with custom themes, and their relative cheapness. Custom themes, when Wordpress wasn’t as widespread when I first began blogging, would cost in the region of $400+ for a basic one! But I’ve been quoted from $100-$175 for a redesign of madringo.com - not bad! Considering, the more individual your blog looks, the better chance that you’ll attract more reoccuring visitors - although as everyone always says, Content is King!

I’ve no problem with forking out the money, as I know I’ll make it back from the income of this site. But, I’ve decided, to give it a go myself first. I’ve a fair amount of experience with HTML and CSS, and some PHP script - I haven’t done much as regards Wordpress. I’ve modified the default theme for other sites, but no made one from scratch.

So I think, I’ll start off by modifying a developed theme to suit my needs - get the hang of the structure of a Wordpress theme, and then give my own a go. But for a while, I’m putting a pre-designed theme up, as I’m sick of the default theme - I believe it’s driving my visitors away in droves!

Like a lot of blogs, this being no exception, we tend to get bogged down and slow due to resource eating plugins and themes - most of which we don’t even use or utilise.

Well today, I went all out with jotting down what was vital to run the blog, and was just bogging us down as regards to loading speeds etc…

I’m a fecker for finding plugins or themes I like, installing them, find out it’s not what I expected or it’s not needed or no longer required - so it’s disabled and left…still eating up server resources!

So while I had an hour to spare today (probably the only hour I’ll have this week - but that’s another blog post all together! ), I set down, in front of the laptop (obviously!), logged into Wordpress Admin for madringo.com, noted what plugins I was using, what I wasn’t, and what I needed - same goes for themes…except I just deleted them all except Default and the previous one I was using (I can’t remember it’s name!).

I then went on to delete what wasn’t required (quite a lot!), and then went on a spree to find what I wanted - which wasn’t a lot. But I still ended up going on an impulse download! Anything I liked the look or sound of I downloaded, bad in two factors - one I spent the time removing obsolete plugins, and two I’m running out of Harddrive space on my laptop (I think it’s time for a external HDD!)

Back on topic, I just got some simple light plugins, an Emoticon one, a WWL Translator (still haven’t figured it out yet!), and the Text Link Ads plugin for Wordpress - might as well!

I’ve also recently installed the Flickr Widget by Donncha O’Caoimh, and formatted my sidebar widgets a little bit better - I’ve also made a new header with a Domo-Kun image I found on t’internet!

Yep - I’m really getting the hang of this blogging thing :twisted:

For some reason, since I’ve returned from Cork, everyone wants a piece of me, in the form of wanting a website, some bebo skins (I’ve got 3 people after skins!), coding work, as well as investment opportunities!

I’m overwhelmed with it, I haven’t the time to work on my own sites anymore with people after some of their own - expecting me to drop everything and run to them…and then not get paid! I don’t mind doing bebo skins, mainly as I get some promotion from them and little work is required for them, and coding work I’m in 50/50 with. I just haven’t the time to read up what is required, figure out a solution, and then impliment it in code form!

And as for investment! I’m not really interested in anything at the moment folks, so for a while I don’t want any proposals into my inbox - no offence, but some of the stuff I’m asked to pitch in for has little, to no earning probability. Meaning, there’s a slim chance that I’ll earn a profit - I’d be lucky to get my money back with some of the ‘investment opportunities’!

As you may see I’ve reverted to the old skin, I wasn’t liking the new one for some astranged reason, so for the time being we’re back running on the old style - I’ll eventually find a suitable skin…

I came across an old hard drive (from last year), of when I first really began on the dot com scene. And on the hard drive, contained many folders of some websites I started, but due to getting bored with them, or just letting them go to hell had a premature demise.

I found the original draft for madringo.com, with my attempts at a Contact Form (I got it in the end though!), as well as my first attempt at PHP Variables - It still confuses me  :???:

I also found the files for some of my sites, no gone (or with new owners), such as NewBlends.com, Weirdsorts.com, Arse Biscuits.net, Fish-Co (for a mate), The Donahies.com, CIÉBuses.info, Irish Transport.info, and a few others which weren’t on a TLD.

It’s interesting to look at my skills developing, from the time I couldn’t use Photoshop, to the time I hadn’t a clue on how to use PHP (and didn’t know what it was!), to the time I couldn’t use CSS.

All the websites show off my progressive development skills (although they still aren’t great!), and it’s interesting seeing one of my first sites, simply coded with HTML and nothing else, and one of the latest sites I’ve coded using HTML, PHP, CSS and XHTML.

Anyway, that’s enough of the ‘trip down memory’ lane for me!   :roll: